Augmented Aspects: Chapter 92 Super Busy Hospital (Patreon)

Chapter 92

Super Busy Hospital

It is amazing how life can change drastically from moment to moment. One moment you are standing there, caught in what looks to be a good old Wick standoff, of one versus not just one but two independent armies. Armies that up until a moment ago were gladly continuing their ceaseless war of attrition with each other.

Then next moment, you heal a boy and his ghost dog, and suddenly you are swamped with would be patients that not only don’t care about the order they were in. They also don’t care about anyone else other than them and trying to get you to resurrect their dead friends, family that apparently died a few hundred years ago, and their long-lost lover that stole their first kiss.

***

Even with Mallory’s display and speech that only did so much for these two armies. It was clear that towards the center of each unit about a kilometer and a half away from the fringe was where the healer tents were set up. Meaning that there was already a known system for getting the injured and dying off of the field and to relative safety, where they could be healed and later sent back out to resume the endless war.

Here and now, Mallory had gotten everyone’s attention by jumping up into the air and giving her speech. There was an ever-growing horseshoe of people that came forward, but everyone seemed to stop within thirty feet of me. I paused, but only then realized that they were likely feeling the area of effect of Mallory’s aura. While she had dialed it back, I could tell that it was ready to go at nearly any moment in time.

Seeing that everyone was just standing around not quite knowing how to proceed, I decided to take it upon myself to get this started. Looking around, I saw that there were a number of spirits, and worse spirits that had been killed rather recently.

Only after a moment’s notice did I realize that there were in fact two different classifications of spirits. I didn’t know if this was a measure of just how far into the spirit realm we had gone, one where the first spiritual body could be killed and a second spiritual body could be made to stay around, but there seemed to be something deeper to this whole floor. If I had to guess, I would say it had something to do with that massive tree, the spiritual equivalent of Yggdrasil, that I could still only see the base outline of, even with my three-kilometer range of sight. But that was something for later on, for now I needed to get these healings started.

Pointing to an orc that had a spiritual wolf by their side. “You there, with the puppy, come here.” I said, pointing to the orc.

“Me?” The orc asked, his voice crying out in the way only Orcish could mangle words. After a pause, I realized that I had spoken to him automatically in Orcish myself, thanks to my Polyglot skill. Wow, just thinking about that old skill brought memories for a second of me listening in on the little goblins that inhabited the dungeon in Maltese. Shaking my head, I focused back on the present, to the orc that was missing his right hand, and clearly was in a weakened spiritual state.

“Yes you, come here. I will heal your hand, and bring your dog back. After which time you and your dog will be out of the war here for the next week. Do you so agree?”

“Yes.” The orc confirmed, nodding his head and began moving forward. He continued moving slowly until he was only a foot away, only once here did he state in a low voice so that only I could hear him. “I just want to say that I don’t have a dog. Well, I did, but he…” the orc said trailing off as he looked away.

Hearing that I just shook my head. “You do, and he never left your side.” I said, pointing to the side where the little dog was standing, suddenly surprised that someone could see it.

In a way, I had to think that this was so meta. I was seeing the spirit lives of dead spirits, but this was good, as it meant I should be able to find the true dead and bring them back. Meaning that even if my parents had passed away as spirits, I should be able to find them.

I will say that there was a bit of a noise barrier between myself and the dead spirit wolf, for it was there yipping and barking happily at my attention. But I could not hear the sound of it, not that it mattered. All that did matter was that I could see it, and if I could see it, then I was certain I could heal it, given enough time.

“Now let’s do this.” I said, holding out my hand palm up and waited. I could have healed the orc from a distance, but that would cost an extra 20% mana, while I was currently full-on mana, I knew that the 20% casting cost would add up quickly, particularly with the number of people that were around.

The orc looked concerned at first, but then took a deep breath and nodded to themselves as they moved forward and placed their one good hand on my outstretched hands. Even in this, my human teenager form the orc’s hand was massive. Then with a second of focus, I began channeling healing energies into the body of the orc, going through the hand, then the arm, and finally through the other arm that ended in a stump just under the elbow. There was no spell for regrow limb, well I take that back, there likely was, but I felt that such a spell would be rather wasteful as it would either require the full mana for a complete limb or be completely wasteful and a good catch all that took away originality. For me I just did this cast like I do almost all casts, by feel. I focused on the way the orc’s arm moved, the way it once was, I could feel the way the arm had shrunk recently from lack of use. With a focus on the spiritual form of the orc, it was clear that his spirit still recognized the arm for how it was, seeing the spiritual limb, I focused on that being the end shape. Then it was just a matter of using my newly acquired Life Magic tree and using it to its utmost. In this case I used my spirit energy as an outline, then began pouring in energy into my Life Magic to make the outline or cast of the hand. Then from there I used the abundant pool of energy in my Omni-Heal to fill in the rest. This was a perfect cycle, as it meant that by the time, I was done filling in the outlined hand that I created, one that was an exact match to how his arm had been, I had refilled the energy well of my regular energy pool.

Finally, after a long time, I made sure to cast this one with a mana recovery rate, that again lowered the cost by an additional 10%. Again, this was all done to set expectations. I was slow, but I would be able to be proficient with my healing.

“What?” He shouted, then holding up his now healed left hand and turned it. “Even my arm, it is all back to the way it was.” He said, showing the other members of his unit excitedly how I not only created a new hand, but also gave him the muscle mass he had lost from the dismemberment and subsequent loss of limb.

“Thank you, thank you.” He said excitedly.

He was about to run off, when I stopped him. “We aren’t done yet.” I said.

He paused looking at me confusedly, but then I pointed down to his side, to the dog that was willing to follow him away even now.

“Huh?” He asked, but then recognition seemed to fill his mind, as he realized. “You mean it? You really can save her?”

I nodded.

While I wasn’t completely certain how to bring back the spirit of an already killed spirit animal, I knew that the mere fact that I could see the creature meant I should be able to affect the creature. I mean, what good is having Tier XI Spirit magic if we can’t bring back a spirit animal or two.

“Mallory, will you grab it?” I asked, and pointed to the dog.

Mallory looked at me confused, but then did as I asked and reaching out with her glowing hands tried to interact with the spirit realm.

“What?” Mallory asked, as her hands first made contact with, and then held onto the thick shaggy fur of the dog, which was more than likely a dire wolf, well a baby one, but a dire wolf nonetheless. I waited for Mallory to grab it, then seeing that it was being held in place, I nodded.

Healing a spirit wolf, well the lingering spirit of a dead spirit wolf was different than I would have expected. Using regular Spirit Magic to affect the creature was clearly painful to the creature as it yipped and bucked wildly in Mallory’s arms.

“Sorry.” I said, holding out my hands to try to placate the animal, but my hand went through the creature. That’s when I realized I would likely need to do something like Mallory was doing to touch this creature. She had her Valkyrie magic which let her interact with any and all spirits, part of the lore of BiPrism was that Valkyries could destroy the souls that were undeserving of rebirth, meaning that even if you had respawns remaining, you could have them stripped away by angering a Valkyrie too much. That was also part of why Mallory had gotten such a reputation as she was known to eliminate corrupt rulers from the very start, making it so the common person would have a better life. That was the reason why I was thankful to be able to both help Mallory, and thankful that she opted to go on with me on this odyssey I was currently on.

Realizing regular spirit energy was too much for the spiritual wolf, I decided to slow down the flow, to make it so the amount of energy I used was halved. Placing a thin coating of the slow energy on my hand I reached out and was surprised to feel that I could now contact the wolf pup. This was not quite right, as the contact with the wolf in this form made my hand tingle slightly, this was what I considered to be a warning that I was slightly out of resonance. From there it just took a few minor tweaks, slowly increasing the rate and flow until I was at roughly 75% energy, that is when I could full touch the spiritual dire wolf pup and felt the most connection to it. Finally having the correct resonance, I nodded to myself, and then began to heal.

I didn’t go for the full Resurrection, as I normally would. The main reason for this was that I didn’t Resurrect the orc ghost, meaning that giving this spiritual wolf a full body would mean I would have to separate the two, or go back and fully Resurrect the orc. That would be both time-consuming, and wasteful of my resources, which in this case was my mana. Also, it would mean that I would have to open a rift and release everyone I healed, lest they get stuck here and start taking spiritual damage. No, the easiest action was just to give this spiritual wolf a spirit body that it could grow with, now the only problem was how?

As it turns out, healing is both easy and intuitive, well after a certain point that is. Just as I powered down the amount of spiritual energy needed to interact with this spirit wolf pup, I decided to channel down the energy I would normally use for a Resurrection, this turned out to be the right mode as I was able to first create an outline of the creature.

“Whoa!” Everyone who was still watching us exclaimed, denoting that they could also see the spiritual wolf pup again. This was good, as it meant I was on the right track. Also, it was good as it meant that I could now cast a Modified Resurrection for spiritual creatures that had already been killed at least once in their spiritual forms, and the best part was it only cost 75% of what a real Resurrection would cost.

With the shell created, the rest was simple, as it was just a matter of me channeling in Omni-Healing energy into the wolf spirit shell that was now a perfect mirror of the spirit that had been following the orc.

Standing tall, I made sure to keep my left hand on the wolf pup head, so I could maintain the 20% reduced cast of healing. Then with my free right hand, I gestured for an elf who had been just standing there with their mouth wide open to come forward.

“Come on.” I said, waving them over and making sure to speak perfect elven.

The elf began walking forward after a second.

“Grr!” The wolf said.

Angry tap.

I tapped the dire wolf spirit on its recently reformed and highly sensitive nose. “You stop that!” I said in the same way one would scold a toddler.

The wolf looked confused, looking first at me, then back to the orc master. “Don’t look at him. You are here in my care, and now you must follow my rules. My rules are no hostilities, here or to anyone receiving my care!” I spoke loudly enough so that everyone around could hear me.

There was a moment of silence as everyone looked confused, at first. All it took was Mallory standing up and straightening her posture into that of a battle stance, that made everyone realize I was the easier of the two to deal with. At the same time Mallory let out her aura that she had been holding back, honestly the aura didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t know if this was a matter of me being in the same group as Mallory, or if there was more to it, but while I could feel the aura she released, I was not bothered by it. In fact, all it really did was make it so it was slightly easier for me to cast my healing spells.

With order restored, I began healing the elf who was apparently a magic caster of some kind that had been hobbling around on a prosthetic leg that held a lot of enchantments on it. That was what made me realize they needed to be healed.

“Why hello there.” Mallory purred at the new elf.

“Um, hello.” The female elf said, smiling brightly at Mallory, before moving a tuft of hair behind her pointy ear and slightly exposing her neck to Mallory.

“One second, before you distract my patient, let me heal her at least.” I said, interrupting Mallory’s meeting with the random elf magician.

“Right.” They both said simultaneously.

At that I just shook my head but didn’t say anything. By this point I had put my fingers back onto the wolf, to make sure I finished healing its body. Then I began the process of creating a spiritual copy of the real leg that the elf had lost. Then once I was done creating the outline, I only had a few seconds left of healing the wolf pup, while I began using Omni-Heal to continue healing the previously missing leg.

This was slightly faster of a pace than I would have wanted to keep, but for the beginning stages it showed that I was going to be both impartial and that around me would be a safe spot where no one would battle.

Finally, I finished healing the pup first. Once it was done, it jumped around excitedly chasing its own tail, before going to tackle its owner. At least it tried to, as it ran forward and put its paws on the orc’s chest and happily opened its mouth and began licking the orc.

Even the elves that had gathered looked on at the sight with a begrudging smile on their lips.

I then used my free left hand to point out another orc needing to be healed. “You there with the missing left side of your body.”

At that a towering orc came forward. He looked down at the elf I was healing with disdain, but all it took was a quick glance from me and an admittedly more menacing glare from Mallory to make it so the orc just let out a defeated breath, before coming closer. The orc might have been powerful, a clear previous general of the battlefield, but he was nothing before the restrained might of Mallory.

“Thank you for this, is there anything I can do?” The elf with the now healed leg and a highly enchanted prosthetic leg in her hand, a valuable souvenir, asked when I was going through the final stages of healing.

“Yes, I am sure there is. If you ask Mallory there, I am sure she can work with you.” I suggested, smiling to myself at the look the elf gave when I mentioned Mallory.

“Yes, I think that would be, great.” The elf said, once again fidgeting with her hair and once again exposing her bare neck to Mallory.

“We can always use help.” Mallory said, placing a hand on the free arm of my former patient, as she began walking her away.

With that, I pointed to an elf that was clearly suffering from the Blight. “You, you are next.” I said.

“Me, but I am fine.” The confused elf said.

I shook my head. “No, you suffer from the Blight, come here and I will heal you.”

“But no one can heal the Blight. If they could, then this whole war would have been over long ago.” The elf protested but began walking forward after a sharp glare from Mallory.

“My battle said for you to go get healed. That means you go and get healed. Got it! If she says she can heal you, then she can. Also, I too was healed by her of the Blight. That is why I will follow her anywhere.” Mallory said, rolling up her sleeves to show something. I don’t know what she was showing as all signs of the Blight that I could tell were gone, but apparently there were vein markings or something that showed that she once had the Blight, but that it was now gone. From a health perspective she was perfectly fine, so I had no clue what she was showing. However, it seemed to work as there was a collective “ohh,” from the crowd. Then the elf reluctantly came forward.

Seeing the elf, I held out my right hand, and while channeling healing energy into the orc shell that was missing their entire left arm and part of their chest, I also began working away the effects of the Blightfrom the elf.

This was good as the orc had their complete focus on what I was doing to the elf. But I could also tell that there was no malice in the glance of the orc, just pure interest on behalf of the orc.

Curing the Blight was a bit more complicated than I remembered, especially as my last true case was months ago. But it was fairly easy once I remembered the trick of tackling it from all sides and not giving it any quarter. Also, it didn’t hurt that this was nowhere near as bad of a case as Mallory had, when we first met. In all it only took a matter of minutes to cure this patient of the Blight, versus the hours of slow continual healing that it originally took for me to heal Mallory. A huge part of this was the fact that I was now a much higher level and my control over healing magic was a lot higher than back when I first met Mallory. Also, my control over magic was also improving, so while it might have felt like a long time it was actually fairly quick. In the end, the curing of the Blighted elf ended at the exact same time as the curing of the orc general.

The orc general just stared on in amazement at the elf, even as it stood up to stare at the elf.

For his part the elf looked just as amazed, but his eyes were locked solely on me.

“That was…” he began, but his voice was quickly tuned out as I heard the ping of system announcements.

The first was fairly straightforward and easy to get rid of as I prepared to continue my healing campaign.

Hidden Quest Complete (Repeatable): Curing The Blighted: You have found a way to remove the blight from individuals infected with the curse of corruption. Cleanse everyone you can of the Blight and be rewarded: Rewards: Experience (100).

Experience Gained: 50/50.

Seeing that, my greedy heart beat a little faster as this curing the Blight was super easy, mainly as most people here only seemed to have minor cases of the Blight. This wasn’t as easy as throwing away bags of trash money, but it was close.

Then came the second message that caused everyone to pause.

World Notice: World Tree Yggdraspirit Has Awoken from Its Slumber…

Unfortunately, that was as far as I got into the message, as at that exact moment the world began to shake and rumble beneath my feet.

Well, you have done it now Cass… I thought to myself as the world began to change around us.